Let's talk houses, Zillow says

Online Q&A lets users share real estate information

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Zillow.com is taking steps today toward creating a virtual real estate conversation, and company officials expect real estate agents to do a lot of the talking.

People spend a lot of time talking about real estate, said Richard Barton, chairman and chief executive of the Seattle-based Web site. "Trying to get these conversations online is the long-term dream of what Zillow is trying to do."

Barton's theory is that conversations start with questions, so Zillow's new Home Q&A allows anyone to ask anything about any house, and lets anyone answer. Other new features let users set up a free profile page, post notice of any home for sale and buy cheap, quick ads targeting any ZIP code.

Home Q&A will list questions and answers on a home's Zillow page. Barton expects users to ask about details of a particular home and other things, such as the closest coffee shop or the best commuting routes. He sees the success of Web sites such as YouTube and Facebook and the fact that about 600,000 people have updated information about their own homes on Zillow.com, as evidence that users are ready to play a larger role.

"People are contributing to the Web now," he said.

Real estate agents make up about 150,000 of Zillow's monthly visitors, which hit about 4 million in February, and company officials expect them to play a large role in answering users' questions.

"It's a way for them to show their expertise and also to gain exposure," Zillow spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky said.

Those providing answers can link to their personal pages and build up reputations through users' ratings of their answers as useful or not. Monitors will ensure questions and answers stay on topic and away from nastiness.

Zillow also will try to sell agents' ads through its new fill-in-the-blanks EZ Ads feature. Agents and others can quickly create a small ad that includes a message, photo and contact link and pay with a credit card to have the ad appear on pages for as many ZIP codes as they choose. The minimum cost is $10, which buys 1,000 appearances.

"Will it work? We're not really sure," Barton said. "Getting agents to spend the time to buy anything we know is difficult."

Zillow officials hope the new features will drive traffic to the site and drive away agents' fears that the company is trying to marginalize them in the way Expedia, Barton and Zillow President Lloyd Frink's former venture, helped do to travel agents.

"I'm encouraging my employees to embrace Zillow," he said. "It remains to be seen how much it helps in selling our listings, but it's absolutely certain that it can't hurt, and I think we owe it to our sellers to try every means possible."

But there are a lot of options and Zillow might not be the best, Grimm said. "Some people feel like you can never have too much exposure, but I think you can if it's the wrong kind of outlet."

It has become clear that Zillow is not trying to displace agents, Grimm said. "They're positioning themselves to be a resource to real estate agents as well as the consumer."

Brad Inman, publisher of the real estate journal Inman News, predicted agents would use the new features.

"These are people who put their pictures on their business card and when they give you their business card, they give you five," he said. "If there's an opportunity to network, promote themselves, find leads, they'll be on it."

Inman expected others would join Zillow's conversation as well.

"They continue to kind of push the envelope here," he said. "Zillow's become kind of a phenomenon, so I suspect users will try just about everything they put out there."

The Seattle-based online real estate broker Redfin allows users to ask questions about a home, but does not post the questions and answers on its site the way Zillow now does.

"I think that's a great feature," Redfin spokeswoman Cynthia Pang said. "We're all about being open, so anything that gives more information to the consumer, we're all for it."